Ukrainian journalist dies of gunshot wounds in Kiev attack

A Ukrainian reporter has died of a gunshot wound after masked men attacked him on the way home in central Kiev. His colleagues suspect the attack was not accidental.

The journalist, Vyacheslav Veremyi, of the local
“Vremya” (“Time”) pro-government newspaper died
early on Wednesday morning of a gunshot to the chest while
doctors were trying to save him.

“Early this morning, Kiev correspondent, Vyacheslav Veremyi,
died in hospital,” said Vesti, a Russian-language daily, in
the statement. “Vyacheslav received a bullet wound to the
chest. He succumbed to his injuries due to blood loss.”

The reporter and his colleague, IT specialist Aleksey Lymarenko
were in a taxi on their way home. As the taxi driver stopped at
traffic lights, a group of “unknown men with bats and
weapons, in hard hats, camouflage and black masks” ambushed
the car.

They pulled the reporter, his colleague and the driver from the
car and beat them up, the paper said. The latter two sustained
severe injuries, with Aleksey Lymarenko’s face being seriously
maimed.

The attack occurred about 800 meters away from Independence
Square, where clashes between police and protesters were raging
on.

As the newspaper’s deputy editor-in-chief said, Lymarenko managed
to return to the office and raise the alarm about the attack.

“We could not reach Vyacheslav on the phone. For about an
hour we were looking for him, and started ringing around the
hospitals. At one of the hospitals they said Vyacheslav was
there. He had been in surgery since 1am and only at about 5am
were we informed that he died,” the deputy editor-in-chief
told Russia’s LifeNews channel

It is still unknown who was behind the attack.

According to witnesses’ accounts, the so called
"titushki" – Ukrainian slang for hired thugs – were
roaming the streets in that area and there had been attacks
reported shortly before they ambushed the reporter’s taxi.

At the same time, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief says he does
not believe that the attack was accidental.

“The situation, when a car gets attacked and it’s doing
nothing wrong, is certainly not typical for Kiev,” Igor
Guzhva told LifeNews. “There are different testimonies, but
it is obvious: we need to do something about this outrage.
Journalists and citizens are suffering at [the hands] of bandits,
no matter how they are affiliated politically.”

Guzhva did not rule out that the violence could be linked to the
reporter’s work in the newspaper - Vyacheslav Veremyi was just
back “in the field” after a month-long sick leave.
Covering violent riots in Kiev last month, he sustained severe
eye injuries and partly lost his sight.

“It looks like a random attack, because Vyacheslav was on his
way home from work. But there are certain things that indicate
that it was not a coincidence. We are conducting our own
investigation and perhaps it really was not a random
attack,” he said. “In fact, this is the first
journalist, who was killed during the unrest, and there is no
reaction. I want to emphasize this. This surprises us and raises
certain questions,” Guzhva stressed.

The newspaper said that Veremyi was its “leading
journalist,” who had been reporting on the protests on
Kiev’s Independence Square over the past three months. Vyacheslav
leaves a wife and a small son.